Tag: poverty

The nation marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution marked the anniversary with a week of commemorative editions and a series highlighting the changes in policy over the past half-century.
In a three-day series beginning April 1, the newspaper asked, “a panel of academics and policy experts to talk about the state of race relations, social mobility and segregation 50 years since the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. They represent a cross-section of thought and expertise.”
They are:
Andra Gillespie, a political scientist and Director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University. Her research focuses…
View Article

Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute participated in a May 12, 2015 panel discussion on poverty. Panelists at the Georgetown University event included President Obama. Read the transcript of the entire discussion here, from the White House; below are some of Brooks’ comments:
MR. BROOKS: Look, no good economist, no self-respecting person who understands anything about economics denies that there are public goods. There just are public goods. We need public goods. Markets fail sometimes — there’s a role for the state. There are no radical libertarians up here, libertarians who believe that the state should not exist, for example. Even the libertarians don’t think that. So we shouldn’t caricature the views of others because, in point of…
View Article

It’s Friday!Social media: The Foundation’s Facebook page has 2,388 “likes.” Please share it to help us reach 2,400 “likes” in our 24th year in Georgia! Join us on twitter.com/gppf and share the Friday Facts!
Quotes of Note
“I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic.” – James Madison
“There are currently 139 schools across Georgia that have received a failing grade from the state accountability system for at least three consecutive years. Too few of these students go on to higher education, too few attain job skills and too few get a high school diploma. Too often this leads…
View Article

It’s Friday!Please note: FRIDAY FACTS is made possible by the generosity of our donors. If you enjoy the FRIDAY FACTS, you can help with a tax-deductible contribution that advances our important mission. Click here.Quotes of Note
“Not enough citizens are schooled well on the Constitution. Many can recite the Declaration of Independence, who signed, and list the Articles and Amendments, but lack a deep understanding of how these directly affect and protect the quality of our lives.” – Sue Horn Chappell (publisher/editor, StarNews of Caroll County)
“[T]he not-so-hidden secret about occupational licensure laws is that they enable incumbent providers to protect their own incomes by locking newcomers and competitors out of markets by artificial government force.” – Walter …
View Article

By Harold Brown
You know poverty is losing ground when the rhetoric changes to “income inequality.” Over the past 10 years, The New York Times used this phrase as much as in its previous history.
Income inequality is universal and eternal. It goes along with initiative inequality and all other sorts: educational, mental, psychological and physical. If equality were real in any social measure, the first goal would be exceptions – new classes. Humans are a classifying species; classifying people, houses, clothes, hairstyles, even physiques, and surely incomes.
Classification both codifies inequality and encourages it. And governments are the primary instigators. Government needs to know how many people are in this category or that so it can “fix” inequalities.
It…
View Article

By Benita M. Dodd
Fifty years ago this month – on January 8, 1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson announced an “unconditional war on poverty in America.” Considering the money spent on poverty-related programs in the ensuing half century – $16 trillion, according to the Cato Institute – and the percentage of Americans still listed as poor, it’s time to concede defeat, change strategy or redefine poverty.
Conceding defeat against poverty is unacceptable, of course. But redefining poverty means building a better safety net, not opening a bigger umbrella, as President Obama is expected to propose in his State of the Union Address this month. He’s expected to dramatize income inequality – the gap between the “rich” and…
View Article

When I served four terms in the state Senate, one of the few places where you could go to always and get concrete information about real solutions was the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. That hasn’t changed. [The Foundation] is really right up there at the top of the state think tanks, so you should be very proud of the work that they are doing!